Dispensing liquid from an indoor dispenser of a refrigerator is well known. In fact, many new and existing refrigerators have an indoor dispenser having a liquid outlet to dispense liquid from the refrigerator. All though these existing refrigerators can dispense one or more types of conditioned liquid streams, no concept or platform exists wherein the refrigerator is configured to dispense a number of conditioned liquid streams, such as a heated liquid stream, a chilled liquid stream, a carbonated liquid stream, a filtered liquid stream, an irradiated liquid stream, an oxygenated liquid stream and/or other conditioned liquid streams. Because current refrigerators lack one or more of these conditioned liquid streams, they are incapable of producing a broad gammit of enhanced beverages. Even where an existing refrigerator is capable of producing one or more conditioned liquid stream, the devices or the systems for enhancing or flavoring the conditioned liquid stream are typically internal to the refrigerator and not liquid enhancement hardware, architecture or componentries that can be connected at the liquid dispensing outlet to enhance the conditioned liquid stream dispensed from the indoor dispenser to provide an enhanced beverage for drinking.
Therefore, a need has been identified in the art to provide an apparatus and method for a refrigerator with a liquid dispensing system having the advantage of multi-level conditioning of a liquid stream before being dispensed and a liquid enhancement system to prepare an enhanced beverage using the conditioned liquid streams
Still some systems exist within the refrigerator platform that use a conditioned liquid stream combined with a liquid enhancement component to provide an enhanced beverage; however, these systems often require purging of either the liquid dispensing system or the liquid enhancement systems to try and keep contaminates from being drawn back into either or both systems. Purging these systems does not always insure or minimize the potential for back contamination of the liquid dispensing or liquid enhancement systems.
Therefore, a need has been identified in the art to provide apparatuses and methods for conditioning a liquid stream with a liquid dispensing system associated with a refrigerator, preparing an enhanced beverage with a liquid enhancement system using one or more of the individually conditioned liquid streams and minimizing the potential for back contamination of the liquid dispensing system.